Saturday, August 12, 2017

Weekend Roundup

The suggestion that el-Araj could be New Testament Bethsaida received lots of media attention, not all accurate. I’d recommend this report by Jeffrey Garcia and Steven Notley at the CSAJCO website. An on-site interview with archaeologist Mordechai Aviam is posted at CBN’s Facebook page. The Today show sent a correspondent to the site. National Geographic sets some of the record straight. The Times of Israel looks at the two sites laying claim to the name of Bethsaida.

1 Comments:

Thanks for bringing the Naaman's JHS article to my attention. My initial thoughts are that the 3rd anachronism he discusses on pp. 9-10 suffers from the commonly used term "finger impression". As I emphasized in my 2014 NEAS lecture, it's likely these impressions were primarily made with a device as part of a cultic ritual (or even a bureaucratic governmental one). Naaman then contrasts these simple "finger" impressions with those of a tooled "royal seal impression", leading him to doubt a Judahite connection due to a "long gap of about 250 years." I would rebut with 2 points: 1) The government structure & location(s) at the time of Saul & David were markedly different from that at the time of Hezekiah & Josiah (the 2 candidates commonly linked to the aforementioned royal seals). 2) 2Kings 18:3 & 2Chronicles 30:5, 31:3-6 record a long gap between the times when David & Hezekiah ruled, & the inhabitants of the region tithed.